NOVEMBER 2008Any time you pick up a pencil and start sketching it's a good thing since it's through sketching that we flesh out what we see in our minds. This tutorial is intended to show the importance of having good, detailed sketches before jumping in head first. I use a couple characters from Heroes Welcome to illustrate the point.
It's a natural impulse to want something instantly, but it's rare that, like Athena leaping from Zeus' forehead, an idea emerges fully formed on the first draft. Taking the time to sketch a character for a while before setting it in stone will lead to you being more satisfied with it in the long run.
| In the sketch for Great Man, shown next to the finished vector drawing, you can see how similar the final sketch was to the finished vector drawing. |
Although artists are rarely completely satisfied with their final creation and may fiddle with it over time, having a relatively solid conception to begin with helps not only you, but your readers. Imagine how you react when you're reading a comic and suddenly your favorite character changes an outfit or suddenly starts sporting a mowhawk. Although there's nothing wrong with these things, it does take the reader a bit to adapt and accept the change especially if it's not tied to a logical progression in the story.
I dominantly work with Adobe software for my work, but all you need is a pencil and somethiing to draw on. Never feel like you need to have special tools to be able to do your work. I've scribbled on napkins, cereal boxes and styrofoam cups (sometimes with nothing but a fingernail). Technology and cool products will never make you an artist, they may help but you can only use them as a crutch for so long. Sketch. Sketch. Sketch. You will benefit from doing so. You'll become more acquainted with your characters and they'll, in turn, be more readily accepted by your readers.
| The original sketch for Scab Man next to the finished vector drawing. Most noticeably, his arm was changed a bit and the mouse was added...you never know when things like that will hit you. |  |
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The drawings I've used as examples were created with relatively fancy gadgets. The sketches were done in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet and the finished products were created in Illustrator. The sketches actually aren't as detailed as I would normally like, but since these characters really just have two-dimensional personalities and since I knew the shots would remain static instead of requiring multiple views I focused more on making sure the characters looked fine in the same frame with each other, but some of that is a lesson for another time.
